and styes where they now burrow and wallow in filth, and stench, and darkness.

We have not space in this article to anticipate and reply to other objections.

Of the feasibility of this scheme we have no doubt. The work of colonizing poor children in the West is now prosecuted by a society in New York, with marked success. This work is kindred to the one we propose, although our plan is far more radical and thorough. Instead of merely removing children we propose to remove whole families. Instead of taking them to the homes of others in the West, our plan is to give them the means of making homes for themselves. Instead of trying to remove a few of the results growing out of the evil condition of the poor in the cities, the scheme we propose, will go down to the cause of those evils and remove that. That this work can be done we are sure. We wish we could say with equal confidence that it will be done.

The motives that should prompt to this work lie on the surface, open to the view of all. We may be pardoned, however, for briefly alluding to one of the mighty forces as addressed to the Christian. The pauperism and crime growing out of the surplus of poor laborers in the cities is one of the most difficult and appalling problems presented for solution. to modern civilized society. The means hitherto employed by the churches to reach and elevate these classes, have been wholly inadequate, and have signally failed. Many of the poor of the cities are as stark heathen as ever danced around a human sacrifice in the heart of India or Africa. The fact that they are almost wholly uncared for by the churches which expend millions for the salvation of foreign heathen, has been the standing reproach of the church, and the perpetual scoff of the infidel. Now the scheme we propose will be adopted and carried out by Christian benevolence, if at all. It will, therefore, redound to the glory of our holy religion and of its Divine Author, and to the honor of the Church of God. It will take off the reproach that has lain as a mountain on the bosom of the church. It will add beyond calculation to her moral power. It will thus tend mightily to hasten the time when "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord and nothing shall hurt or destroy in all his holy mountain."

PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN REFORM TRACT And Book SOCIETY.

We acknowledge the receipt of several new publications from the corresponding secretary of this Society. One of them is a Sabbath-school book of 134 pages, entitled:

"A Home at the South, or Two Years at Uncle Warren's." This is another in the series of antislavery Sabbath-school books which this society is issuing. It is a pleasant and attractive story. The book, like other issues of the society, is deeply religious in its tone. Sympathy for the slave, and efforts for his emancipation, are represented as the offspring of true religion-as the fruit of love in the heart for the Saviour. This is the true teaching. The abolitionism of some people constitutes their religion. They profess a strong and often uncharitable zeal for the freedom of the slave, while the whole current of their lives bears testimony that they are governed by the same spirit and principles that actuate the slaveholder. True zeal for the cause of the slave's emancipation-the zeal that will stand trials and persecutions can be found only in the truly regenerated heart. At the same time every heart that is truly regenerated will have this zeal. It is impossible for a true Christian not to feel for the poor, and not "to try to remember those in bonds as bound with them." The pretended piety, in this land especially, which is utterly indifferent to the condition of three millions of slaves, is, of necessity, spurious, whatever zeal for the conversion of men and the glory of God it may affect. We are glad to see these truths set forth in this work. The book also illustrates the declaration of the Saviour, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou perfected praise."

We have also received three tracts from the society entitled respectively, "Have we any need of the Bible." "Is God Everybody and Everybody God." "Did the World Make Itself." These tracts are an able and spirited discussion of the themes indicated in their titles. They are intended and well adapted to meet some of the most popular and prevalent forms of infidelity and atheism of the present day. The exposition of the folly and impiety of Pantheism is particularly good. The writer shows conclusively of this system, to use his own language, that "it has rotted and putrified among the worshipers of cats and monkeys, and holy bulls, and bits of sticks and stones, on the banks of the Ganges, for more than two thousand years, yet is now hooked up out of

its dunghill, and hawked about among Christian people as a prime new discovery of modern philosophy for getting rid of Almighty God."

The Reform Tract and Book Society is doing good service to the cause of truth in the issue of these tracts. The current infidelity of our time is specious and dangerous, at the same time that it is exceedingly superficial, and in many of its phases unspeakably absurd. It is dangerous, not because of any real force in its arguments, but because the human mind, especially in the young, is thoughtless, and averse to careful investigations after truth, and because the human heart in its carnal state is averse to truth. To expose clearly the sophistry, absurdity and falsehood of the theories which men adopt to get rid of the Bible is a most useful and important work. This work is well done by the writer of these tracts on the points which they discuss.

The Reform Tract and Book Society is going steadily for ward in its great work. It deserves the prayers and contributions of all friends of truth and right.

WHAT IS A RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPER.

Some of our exchanges are discussing this question with considerable warmth. A few of them that claim to be religious journals themselves, occasionally exhibit a spirit which is not a very beautiful exemplification of that religion, the essential element of which is charity or love. This discussion is mainly in the form of an attack on the New York Indepen dent, which is read out of the list of religious journals because it devotes a portion of its space to questions of politics and humanity. It is assumed that politics and religion. are two things entirely, and totally separate and distinct; and that a religious newspaper is out of its sphere, and loses its character when it meddles in any way with political subjects.

This question is one of great importance, but one which is, we think, not hard to settle. The proper business of a religious newspaper is to teach religion. Its appropriate work is to expound the theory and enforce the duties of true piety. Now, if we know what religion is, we can be at no loss to know what a religious newspaper is. Fortunately we have a most explicit and beautiful definition of religion in the word of God:

"Pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, to keep himself unspotted from the world." James 1: 27.

Certainly a newspaper which breathes the spirit of this passage, and inculcates the duties therein enjoined, is religious in the only true sense.

But we have another inspired definition of true religion even more summary and comprehensive than this:

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." Matt. 7: 12.

This is the sum of all duty between human beings. The other great duty of true religion is to love the Lord with all the heart. That is surely a truly religious journal which inculcates the duty of supreme love to God and of equal love to men. But the evidence of love to God is love to men. "If ye love me," says Jesus Christ, "ye will keep my com mandments; and this is my commandment that ye love one another."

With these fundamental and indisputable principles before us we are prepared to consider the question whether it is within the province of a religious journal to meddle with what are called secular and political questions. By visiting the fatherless and widows we are to understand the general duties of benevolence and love to all human beings, with especial reference to the weak, and poor, and afflicted. It is surely and strictly a religious work to comfort the distressed, to relieve the suffering, to deliver the oppressed, to establish and execute justice and judgment among men. Hence it is the appropriate work of a religious newspaper to point out and enforce these duties. But the performance of these offices of justice and love very often requires political action. Widows and fatherless children are as often wronged under the forms of the law as in any other way. Shall the Christian, therefore, not visit them in their affliction, and try to relieve them lest he shall be compelled to come in contact with political institutions? The protection of the weak and the delivery of the wronged and oppressed, is the work for which civil governments are instituted. But they are often prostituted to the very opposite purpose. Shall the religious newspaper, then, not expose the wrong and demand the right because the questions are mixed up with politics? Was William Wilberforce any less a devoted Christian because he sat in Parliament and used every honorable means to accomplish the suppression

of the African slave-trade, and the abolition of slavery by political action? Was Dr. Beecher any more out of his sphere, as a minister when he urged the suppression of liquorselling by law, than when he urged moral suasion against the traffic?

The truth is to the true Christian there is no act of his life that is exclusively secular or exclusively political. Whatsoever he does, he does for the glory of God. He buys and sells and votes for this end, just as much as he prays and preaches for it. His Bible teaches him not only that it is his duty so to do, but also instructs him how he may do it. But it is the business of the minister of the gospel and of the religious newspaper to explain the Bible, and therefore just as much in their proper province to show men how they may vote for God's glory as how to pray acceptably.

The idea that politics and religion should be kept entirely separate is practical atheism. God's law is the supreme rule of man's conduct everywhere. It is to be obeyed in all our actions; in those which are secular and political, as well as in those more distinctively religious. God has made no division of authority with human governments or political parties. He has not set over one part of the domain of human conduct to their exclusive control, and kept another part for himself. Civil government and political parties have but one proper function, and that is to execute the will of God. When they fail to do this they ought to be abolished. When they oppose their edicts to the law of God, the Christian must disobey and oppose them on peril of his soul's salvation. Hence it is indisputably the duty of the Christian minister and the religious journal to show men when the enactments of civil governments, and the measures of political parties are in conflict with God's law, and to warn them against obeying those enactments and supporting these measures. They should unceasingly urge the duty of obeying God rather than man, and they are false and faithless to their trust when they fail to do so.

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We do not hold that political questions should occupy all, or even the greater part of the attention of religious teachers and journals. The great object of Christian labor in all departments is the conversion and sanctification of men. make mankind wise and good, and thus glorify God, is the one great end of all religious instrumentalities and efforts. But the first step toward making men good is to convince them of sin.

This can be done only by showing that their conduct is